Differentiating authority in hydrogen news: Source hierarchies and evaluative positions across Germany and MENA newspapers

News sourcing research establishes institutional dominance, yet broad measures of elite visibility obscure how authority shapes access and evaluation. Using the HOI model, this study compares the attributed visibility and evaluative positions of political, economic, epistemic, international, civil society, lay-public, and journalistic actors in hydrogen coverage. A quantitative content analysis examined over 16,000 attributed statements in newspapers from Germany, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt. Political and economic actors dominated external visibility; epistemic and international actors were secondary, while civil society and lay-public voices remained marginal. Political and international actors expressed the most positive evaluations, whereas epistemic actors and journalists were more cautious. German coverage exhibited greater differentiation in actor-linked evaluations, while MENA newspapers displayed more uniformly affirmative positions across actors. The findings demonstrate that institutional dominance varies in composition and evaluative implications across contexts.